The present invention relates to data analysis, and more specifically, to entity analytics. Entity analytics products perform entity analytics by associating entities (such as ships) with their features (such as loads) and feature elements (such as items and tonnages).
Entity analytics products further allow entities to be associated with space and time data. Some entity analytics products use an entity feature known as a SpaceTimeBox (STB) that reflects a spatial region and a time interval. The STB functionality provides spatial reasoning capabilities for advanced entity resolution, relationship awareness, and insight/relevance detection.
Motion processing can rely on quantization of space and time. Some entity analytics products use STBs for space and time quantization. The motion of entities with respect to STBs can be used to detect specific entity behavior, in real time, which can be published to downstream analytic applications.
The entity analytics product determines a relationship between two entities to exist when the two entities have sufficiently matching feature sets. To resolve multiple entities to be one and the same entity, or to recognize a relationship between entities, the entity analytics product compares the entities' features and returns scores, based on algorithms specific to the types of features being compared. To achieve high throughput, the entity analytics product relies on exact-match comparison in most cases.